The present disclosure relates to an image forming apparatus that receives settings of various setting values. The present disclosure also relates to an image forming system including such an image forming apparatus.
Some image forming apparatuses such as multifunction peripherals, copiers, facsimile machines, and printers are equipped with a portion that provides a user with guidance (explanation, manual) on operations and settings. For example, there has been known an electronic apparatus including a display portion, a plurality of device portions as targets of maintenance, at least one guidance portion (sheet-shaped member where warning and guidance are indicated) to indicate guidance information including operation procedures and warnings related to maintenance, the guidance portion being disposed at a location corresponding to one of the device portions to which the guidance information is related, and a control portion to display guidance information indicated by a corresponding guidance portion on the display portion, in response to a display instruction.
A maintenance checkup of image forming apparatuses requires technical knowledge. This is the background for maintenance contracts sometimes made between customers and maintenance (support) service providers (such as image-forming-apparatus production and sales companies and their related companies). Under such contracts, a customer makes contact with a service center. Based on the contact from the customer, a service engineer visits the customer. The service engineer dispatched from the service provider company offers maintenance services such as a checkup, making settings, and handling malfunctions. Visiting where an image forming apparatus is installed, for example, a service engineer makes various settings in a manner suitable to the customer's environment, for example. There may be a case where a customer is at a loss about how to make settings calls for a service engineer to visit him or her. In such a case, a dispatched service engineer explains to the customer how to make settings, or the dispatched service engineer himself or herself makes settings for the customer.
The cost for such dispatch of a service engineer (that is, for services offered) is to be charged to customers. Thus, it is likely that the operational cost of an image forming apparatus increases the more frequently a customer requests dispatch of a service engineer. With such a background, there is a demand to reduce the number times service engineers visit customers or have to be dispatched to customers as much as possible to reduce the operational cost.
The reduction in number of times service engineers are dispatched to customers will increase the number of opportunities where customers have to make settings and perform maintenance by themselves. Possible solutions to help customers in such cases include introducing an on-line help function and making the settings easy to do by improving help screens to be displayed on image forming apparatuses. Help information, however, is directed to all the users and thus is somewhat uniform. Thus, these possible solutions are disadvantageous in that even with help information, it is sometimes difficult for customers to appropriately make settings by themselves for intricate and specialized image forming apparatuses to suit their installation environments.
Note that, in the above-described known art, the display portion displays a sheet that indicates sentences and figures for guidance and that is attached to the apparatus. There, the user is provided with only a limited amount of information, and cannot obtain more information than is described on the sheet. Thus, the above-described known art is not helpful to solve the above-described problem.